Dodo

Its difficult to really depict the dodo in a realistic way. There have been many paintings and drawings of representations of what the birds may have looked like. The dodo skeletons in some museums would be made up of bones from other birds, according to research by on the dodo at oxford.

"The dodos were a curiosity, and some were brought to Europe by wealthy collectors. One
of these birds was exhibited in John
Tradescant’s London museum. His collections
were later left to Elias Ashmole and so came to
Oxford, where now only the mummified head
and foot remain. Although minimal, these
specimens represent the most complete
remains of a single dodo, and are of great
value to scientists today. "

"Fat or thin?
The best information about the dodo might be
expected to come from the people who saw the
bird in its native habitat. Unfortunately, most
of the written accounts tell us more about 17th
century attitudes to nature and the writers’
own concerns than they do about the dodo
itself. Images produced by some of the first
Europeans to visit Mauritius in 1598 showed
very thin birds. In a scene from Admiral Van
Neck’s account, a rather athletic dodo is
striding off into the distance. This is in
marked contrast to the fatter, European
representations."

http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/learning/pdfs/dodo.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo